Sustainable Table » Guest Bloggers

My Journey to the “Belly of the Beast”

Dawn — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 03:34:35 +0000

This post comes from our friend Julie Negrin M.S. – Julie is a nutritionist, cooking instructor, writer and most recently, a blogger – check out her blog: My Kitchen Nutrition at www.julienegrin.com/blog.

I just got back from the annual Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) conference which took place in Des Moines, Iowa, or as some call it, “the belly of the beast.” Iowa grows the majority this country’s food but, strangely, Iowans import 80% of the food that lands on their dinner table. Doesn’t make sense, right?

This is the crux of what’s happened to our food system – our farmers are super efficient at growing food but can’t use their crops of corn and soy to feed their own families. I’ve been reading about these issue for years – but let me tell you, reading about it and standing in a farmer’s field next to hogs are two entirely different experiences. My field trip entitled, “Farmers Tell It Like It is,” which took us on a tour of Iowa farms, was extremely enlightening.

A chasm has been growing between writers like Michael Pollan and farmers who work in the field. I have to admit that I didn’t quite understand why the farmers are so angry with Michael Pollan. But as I listened to Jerry Peckumn, a farmer, stand in his fields explaining how difficult it would be to shift from large, conventional farming to small, organic farming, I realized how complicated it really is. And this is the interesting part: Jerry is into eco-friendly farming practices – he raises what are essentially free-range, organic cattle. Yet, he has concluded that it just isn’t economically feasible to switch over to a more sustainable way of farming. He said he’d be more likely to try it if he had more data but he couldn’t find it. Currently, our government gives farmers only one real option: grow conventional soy, corn or wheat – or go broke. Check out this video of one of the farmer’s we visited, George Naylor, describe why big farms keep getting bigger. (This picture is from a conventional farm – you can see how huge the equipment is.)

Farmers are SMART. They can do something that most of us can’t: grow enough food to feed others. Second, they have an incredible grasp of food politics and the complicated legislation that goes along with crop subsidies. And third, they have mastered the intricate, ecological connection between land, animals, and water – I had to ask Jerry several times to explain why simply planting prairie grass improved a host of environmental problems. And this was just in the first 2 hours of the field trip!

I could wax on about all of the issues that farmers are facing right now – but I will let someone with more expertise do that for me. Jill Richardson, who I had the pleasure of meeting while on the Farmer Field trip, writes the blog, La Vida Locavore and covers all of these topics and more. I bought one of her books, Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It, right there on the bus. (And please note, that I still think that Michael Pollan’s work is brilliant – it’s important that we see both sides of the issue.)

The best part of the whole day, of course, was being fed a home cooked meal by Chris Henning, one of our lovely tour guides, at the Wilbeck farm, aptly named Farmhouse Life. We sat down to a mouthwatering meal made from local foods: Corn Bread, Beef and Vegetables, Black Beans and Corn Salad, Jack’s Favorite Biscuits, Grandma’s Rye Bread and my all-time favorite dish, Squash Casserole – which was divine.

We then visited a dairy farm, Picket Fence Creamery where Jill Burkhart and her husband sell dairy products and other locally produced food items at their country store. I found it amazing that as her customers walked away with their food, she called out to them by name. What a concept that we have lost in this country: knowing the people who grow and prepare our food by name.

The Burkharts served us each a huge piece of homemade apple pie and their homemade ice cream. (YUM.) Ordinarily, I can’t eat ice cream – it causes me tummy problems. But the Picket Fence Creamery ice cream? I was just fine. This is something that I’m going to continue to investigate: the fact that much of our food intolerances and other health problems may not be linked to the actual food but how it was grown, produced and prepared.

The rest of the conference was incredibly informative and I met some extremely dynamic people who are doing everything that they can to make sure that the food you put on your table is of the highest quality possible.

In the mean time, I will leave you with some wonderful insight from a cookbook I bought at the Burkhart’s country store, Grandma’s Recipes – Recipes from the 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. Here is advice from Grandma Horst and Grandma Hoover:

“There is one important point to remember: Do not feed a child too many cakes and cookies, so that plain foods are slighted.”

You tell it like it is, Grandma!

Miles from Nowhere: Why Does James McWilliams Hate Local Food?

Sophy — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:39:54 +0000

This blog is from Green Fork editor and Huffington Post blogger, Leslie Hatfield.

Earlier this week, the NY Times Freakonomics blog ran a guest post by author and historian James McWilliams, in which he attempts to weaken the case that the Times made in August regarding farmers’ markets: namely, that they strengthen communities.

Before I start boring you with stories about my favorite farmers, or statistics about how farmers’ market shoppers “have as many as 10 times more conversations, greetings, and other social interactions than people in supermarkets” (this from World Watch Institute’s 2007 “State of the World” report – hat tip to The Ethicurean’s Marc Rumminger), let’s take a step back.

McWilliams is clearly trying to deepen his argument against local food, which up until now, has centered on the fact that buying it doesn’t always lower our carbon footprint. This is not a new point, nor is it without merit, but neither is it particularly well-argued. No locavore worth his/her imported salt is going to argue against the obvious — that is, a local tomato from a hothouse likely carries a larger carbon footprint than a tomato from Florida, even if you’re in Maine. But McWilliams insists on comparing locally-grown apples to imported oranges. Just because the industrial food complex is better equipped to move food around, doesn’t mean that we can’t or shouldn’t build local distribution systems to compete with agribiz. And just because our local food systems have been decimated over the years doesn’t mean that they have no value and can’t be made to grow again.

It’s hard to believe that such a seemingly intelligent guy doesn’t recognize the specious, hole-ridden nature of his own arguments, but let’s assume he doesn’t. In fact, let’s assume he’s right, that local food is perhaps worse for the environment than its well-traveled counterpart and that people having conversations in the course of gathering their food is not inherently valuable and may be just a fad. What about keeping food safe from bioterrorism? What about knowing the practices by which your food was produced? Being able to trace food-born illness back to its source before dozens of people are crippled or dead and millions in tax dollars are spent tracking it down?

What about supporting local economies?

Amongst many of the people he would call “agro-intellectuals,” James McWilliams is known simply as a “contrarian,,” but not in the positive sense of the word, as someone who thinks independently. No, he seems to be one of the more garden variety – someone who takes a contrary position simply to raise their own profile.

I first became aware of McWilliams last spring when the New York Times published his provocative but poorly supported op-ed, making the case that pasture-raised pork is more likely to harbor dangerous pathogens than its industrially raised counterparts. Of course, he neglected to acknowledge that the study he cited was funded by the Pork Board, the industry’s lobbying association, forcing the Times to print a correction, reflected here. Nor did he mention that the more naturally raised hogs in question tested positive for antibodies against trichinosis, rather than the disease itself – which, in essence, means that the immune systems of the pigs in questions have developed protections against the disease. But, hey, no need to let a few pesky facts get in the way. And, in that spirit, McWilliams also declined to point out that industrial animal “husbandry” has likely resulted in other public health issues, most notably (at the time) MRSA bacterial infections.

Then, within weeks of publication, the current swine flu pandemic broke out.

It turned out that the pork op-ed was something of a prelude to another, larger attack on the local/sustainable food movement: his recently published book, Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, in which he warns the reader of legions of rabid locavores who would build up irresponsible local food systems and disserve global ecology through their uber-local diets.

So. First off, the local food movement, while it has gained a lot of traction in recent years, is no army. Nor do most local food enthusiasts adhere to – or expect anyone else to adhere to – a strict 100 mile diet. In many ways, “local,” as it relates to food, is metaphorical – for many people, the act of questioning where their carrots were grown leads to more questions – about who grew it, who profited it from its sale, what kinds of chemicals were used (or not used) and so forth, thus creating an intimacy — a closeness, if you will, that wasn’t there before.

The book raises some good points, but making your way past the army of straw men he raises and fells throughout, frankly, just isn’t worth the time when there are so many more coherent and informative books on the subject. I do give him props for his willingness to present a complex argument, something many mainstream reporters haven’t deigned to do. By and large, the mainstream media oversimplifies, as Time magazine’s John Cloud did back in 2006 when he announced that “local” trumped “organic,” as if one had to choose between the two.

However, McWilliams’s reasoning, even when nuanced, lacks freshness, as evidenced by the local hothouse tomato argument mentioned earlier. These are not new ideas, and the way in which he uses them – as multiple and discrete arguments against an unfairly oversimplified caricature of an emerging social movement – foolishly throws the locally-fed baby out with the proverbial bathwater.

It also disrespects not only those who would question what we’re being fed by agribiz, but also those who would feed us a meal we could trust – namely, the farmers who, against drastically stacked odds, manage to survive in a system ever-increasingly designed to put them out of business and reduce them to mere serfs in a feudal farming system. In one particularly condescending section (I should note that the copy I have is a galley and for all I know, this quote has been changed or edited out completely) McWilliams wrote:

The supply chain is significantly demystified when Local Farmer hands over local peaches from a dusty box with his dirt-encrusted hands. We know where the farms are, we know what the farmers look like, we know when they picked their produce, we think we know how they grew it, and we know that big corporate interests have been left out in the cold, all of which lends our decision to pay extra or make extra trips for locally grown food an air of virtue and a sense of environmental altruism. It just feels right to buy local produce at the farmers’ market, and one reason it feels so good is that we think it is, ipso facto, a small act in the larger drama of saving the planet. It’s at the farmer’s market that we thumb our noses at 1500. [1,500 being the commonly sited number of miles the "average" food item travels from field -- or confinement lot -- to plate]

It’s been pointed out, even by the staunchest sustainable food advocates, that McWilliams does make one inarguable point: without a doubt, Americans (and increasingly, others around the world) are gulping down meat at an unsustainable pace. Again, this is not a new point – most of the people whose work he denounces have been saying this for years — but it’s a point that deserves to be hammered home repeatedly, even if he argues it weakly.

But McWilliams also presents an awkward and disjointed grouping of facts about meat production. For example, he suggests that pasture-raising cattle for beef is more harmful than confinement, due to desertification caused by “manure, fertilizers, pesticides, and repetitive pounding underfoot,” ignoring the fact that sustainable producers don’t overload pastures, don’t commonly use pesticides or fertilizers and don’t mismanage waste. He also notes that manure siphoned into “lagoons” on CAFOs emits more methane than waste dropped on pasture, but in the next paragraph suggests that pastured cows create more greenhouse gases (because they emit more methane than their grain-fed counterparts). However, he ignores here the vast amounts of fossil fuels used in the production and shipping of grains for factory farms, as well as those used to produce and ship the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers that go into that grains production. He doesn’t skirt these facts per se, but never factors them into the grassfed v. CAFO equation.

Why not, instead of pointing to enclosed manure lagoons (his temporary solution) as we somehow convince Americans and others in developing nations to drastically cut back their meat consumption, encourage people to support local producers? Why not eat less meat, but pay more for it, while supporting your local economy and improving your personal health? The price of locally produced, pastured meat is often twice that of its industrially-raised counterpart, but in this instance, couldn’t the cost increase act as a healthy inhibiting factor – similar to taxes on cigarettes – that would encourage people to decrease their meat consumption, as he and so many others agree is needed?

In the end, McWilliams comes off as a bitter and snarky outsider. His strategy of outlining his own foray into the local food world, rather than convince the reader that he has been there too but has since become enlightened, instead paints a picture of him, unable to fit in after forgetting to bring his reusable tote to the farmers’ market, cast out of potlucks perhaps, and turning against the entire movement out of spite. One can see him scowling, plotting his revenge (”I know! I’ll paint them as hypocrites who drive all over town in SUVs in search of this local food!”). His argument is weakened by his obvious bitterness and cheapened by its lopsidedness.

No Impact Man Makes a Splash!

Sophy — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:35:30 +0000

This review comes to us from our friend Kerry Trueman via Meatless Monday…

Get ready for a rare sighting this September: a funny, feel-good environmental documentary. Did An Inconvenient Truth fill you with doom and gloom? Has Food, Inc.’s alarming exposé of our toxic food chain left you with that awful Agribiz aftertaste?

Have no fear, No Impact Man is here to cheer you up. The film, which opens around the country in mid-September, documents the year-long exercise in eco-extreme living that writer Colin Beavan, his wife Michelle Conlin and their daughter Isabella undertook for the sake of a book, a blog and a better life.

Beavan’s No Impact project began, simply enough, as yet another entry in the increasingly crowded “stunt memoir” sweepstakes, exemplified by the glut of “My Year Of (insert self-promoting gimmick here)” titles. The project caught the eye of a pair of documentary filmmakers, and the result is an entertaining, empowering film that asks the question, “Is it possible to have a good life without wasting so much?” The answer is a resounding “yes, we can.”

The hook for Beavan’s book required the family to abandon – for a year, anyway – such cherished American traditions as driving, shopping, watching tv (or doing anything that uses electricity, for that matter), eating out-of-season produce from far away farms, and otherwise being a dutiful GDP-boosting consumer.

“Like Gilligan’s Island, only completely implausible,” was how Stephen Colbert summed up the No Impact family saga. I prefer to think of it as Green Acres meets Little House On the Prairie at the intersection of Sex And The City: it’s got a pair of sophisticated urbanites going back to the land, finding joy in the simple pleasures of hanging out with friends and family, and discovering that there is indeed Life After Shopping.

Conlin, aka Mrs. No Impact Man, emerges as the film’s true hero as she gamely (for the most part) goes along with Beavan’s drastic domestic do-over. Initially, Conlin, who is a senior writer at Business Week, suffers withdrawal from a laundry list of life’s little luxuries. But as the project lurches forward, her fashionista fever breaks and she finds herself more in sync with the bucolic than the bulimic.

Beavan’s attempt to live off the grid in gridlocked Manhattan will surely strike some folks as quixotic–or just plain idiotic. You may regard a life without carbon based creature comforts as a return to the Dark Ages. But, as No Impact Man’s co-directors Laura Gabbert and Justin Schein note, the No Impact experiment is, in fact, “a flash of light” that illuminates the intersection of all the environmental issues that threaten to overwhelm us. By focusing on one family’s struggle to live more sustainably, Gabbert and Schein take abstract, potentially paralyzing problems and scale them down to a digestible and, yes, local level, showing folks how to take a stab at whittling down their own impact.

No Impact Man is all about connecting the dots, weaving our frayed social fabric back together, and encouraging us to think of ourselves as citizens instead of consumers. Beavan makes a compelling case that we have the power to affect real change through our choices, both collectively and as individuals.

And one of the simplest but most significant changes that Beavan advocates is, of course, to drastically reduce or eliminate your consumption of meat. Before the advent of factory farming left us up to our necks in cheap chuck, meat was just one small component of our diets, which relied more on plant-based foods such as beans and nuts to meet our protein needs. So there are a few centuries worth of tried and true meat-free recipes to launch you on your climate-cooling culinary adventures. You’ll find them in abundance right here at Meatless Monday.

Kerry Trueman is an edible landscaping advocate who writes about real food, low-impact living and sustainable agriculture for the Huffington Post, AlterNet, the Green Fork, Air America, and EatingLiberally.org. Her latest project is Retrovore.com, a website for farmers, gardeners and eaters who favor conservation over consumption.

Step Away from the Screen and Into the Kitchen

Sophy — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 22:12:12 +0000

This post comes to us from our friend Joey Lee at the Monday Campaigns.

The day Julia Child accidentally flipped her potato pancake out of the pan, the whole country watched as it hit the stove. This great moment in cooking history was recreated in this summer’s box office hit Julie and Julia, in which Meryl Streep stunningly recreates the late Child’s unique voice, larger than life stature and that unforgettable accident. “When you flip anything, you just have to have the courage of your convictions,” Child explained. “When I flipped it, I didn’t have the courage to do it the way I should have. You can always pick it up.”

This may seem like obvious advice, but when met with a kitchen snafu, how many of us would just give up on the dish? Child’s show, The French Chef, was taped and aired unedited, revealing to audiences everywhere the good, the bad, and the natural human error that occurs in every kitchen. Viewers got to watch her make the occasional misstep, acknowledge the error and move on, fixing the dish in some innovative manner. In today’s world of absurdly polished 30 minutes-or-less segments, how many of us would storm out of the kitchen in frustration if the roux didn’t come together or the soufflé fell?

Or better yet, how many of us wouldn’t dare enter the kitchen at all? Currently, the average length of time Americans spend cooking, about 27 minutes a day, has shrunk to less than half of what it was when Child on the air. In this fast-paced world, our attention spans have decreased considerably since The French Chef debuted in 1963. As Michael Pollan points out in his recent essay for The New York Times Magazine, today’s “cooking show” has changed forms to something best classified as “food entertainment,” which produces cooking shows that value efficiency over quality. These shows deemphasize the food’s origins, flavor and participatory cooking, and stress time-saving gadgets that allow you to get out of the kitchen ASAP, presumably so you can work more hours, make more money and buy more gadgets.

But just as our distracted cultural mindset has demanded speedier food shows, in some cases our short attention spans have also resulted in a high level of feedback and interaction with the cook. Julie and Julia also tells the story of Julie Powell, a 29 year old New Yorker, who lives in 2002’s world of fast-edits, impractical food entertainment and easily distracted audiences. Powell takes advantage of the self-publishing nature of the internet and starts a food blog in which she devotes a year to cooking her way through the 524 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Powell finds purpose and popularity in the blogosphere, appealing to modern audiences’ short attention span, offering easy-to-swallow anecdotes about her experience. Unlike television, blog fans can interact with the blogger, commenting on posts and getting speedy replies, often straight from Julie herself. This interactivity appeals to our need-answers-now sensibility, but unlike modern food entertainment shows, it can also help the reader get up and into the kitchen. Just imagine how much easier cooking would be if you could write Rachael Ray and ask, “What should I substitute for truffle butter in this dish?” or “Where can I find organic peaches in my area?”

Kinzie, a video blogger for Meatless Monday, likes that she can communicate with her audience through the comments posted to her cooking videos, but acknowledges that there are some challenges in appealing today’s viewers. “I think the hardest part is taking a recipe that might take 30 minutes to an hour to prepare and cook and jam it into a less than five minute video,” she notes.

This speedy standard leads to a smooth edit, where the time spent waiting is cut and the viewer is left with an unrealistic expectation of how long the recipe will take. There is some cinema verite magic lost in these smooth transitions as well. If Julia Child had been producing YouTube videos today, she would never have dropped that potato pancake, because those moments would not have made the cut.

So how are we to best use these unrealistically quick cooking videos? Many foodie YouTube’ers do not try to avoid the time constraint by editing, but instead teach a single skill that can be demonstrated in five minutes or less – like poaching an egg or blanching some asparagus. Finding a video demonstration to follow when you stumble across an unrecognizable direction in a recipe can teach you how to cook and adapt – not just to follow directions.

Learning new skills allows us all more creativity and variety in our cooking adventures. We should take advantage of the interactive accessibility and resources that the internet provides. Build up your cooking skill set with brief, but instructional YouTube offerings, or get the skinny on where your ingredients really come from on Locallectual. If you have specific questions, write to the Huffington Post’s EcoEtiquette Column and Jennifer Grayson will fill you in on the dos and don’ts of eating green. Use the wealth of knowledge available online to decipher food labels at Sustainable Table, map your locally available ingredients with the Eat Well Guide, then watch the instructional YouTube offerings’s while you cook for yourself

Participating in your own cooking routine transforms your relationship with what you’re eating. Preparing the food you consume creates a consciousness that can encourage you to be healthier. Earlier this year, the New England Journal of Medicine published a two year comparative diet study, which found that the specific diet the subjects followed was not the crucial of a factor to the diet’s success. The study found that being on any diet made participants more aware of what exactly they were consuming, which caused them to eat healthier. When you immerse yourself in the food you eat, when it is your hands in the dough, or your force behind the knife, you cannot help but become more mindful of what is going into your body.

The Journal of the American Dietetic Association found that home cooking mattered even more than income when predicting healthy habits: a 1992 study showed that low-income women who cooked regularly were more likely to consume a healthful diet than their eat-out-often, high-income contemporaries. So be curious, use the food sites, videos and blogs to get to really know your ingredients and have the courage to sometimes step away from the computer screen. Let the plethora of internet resources excite you enough to run into the kitchen and embark on a new cooking adventure. In the famous words of Julia Child: “Do not be afraid!”

Sustainable Table Recommends “Recipe for America”

Sophy — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:54:33 +0000

This review was written by Sustainable Table consultant, Laura Edwards-Orr.

Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It
by Jill Richardson

Jill Richardson’s Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It is the book for people who care about food and want to do more. Hot off the press, this densely packed, surprisingly quick read will transform readers from interested to advocate seamlessly.

Richardson began her own journey with the seemingly simple question “Why has obesity become so prevalent over the past twenty years?” for a post on the political blog, Daily Kos. Six hundred comments later, it was clear that a discussion of food and farm policy and its relationship to the growing obesity epidemic was one that readers were ready to have. The conversation continues today on Richardson’s blog La Vida Locavore.

After much time spent devouring leading titles on the topic at hand, Richardson came to two conclusions: the obesity problem is inextricably linked to the development of the modern, global industrial food system, and no author had penned a lay person’s guide to fixing the problem. As a practitioner of the full immersion approach to exploring complicated problems, Richardson nevertheless offers a slightly shorter route for those looking to jump in with both feet. “Recipe for America is the book I wish I could have read three years ago, when I first began pondering America’s problem with obesity,” she wrote.

Like any good concoction, Recipe for America starts with a review of the basics: our experiences as eaters and shoppers and why it can be hard to find “good food”; sustainable agriculture as a long-term solution; lessons learned from the Organic Standards; and an overview of the organizations at the heart of the sustainable agriculture and food systems movement. With the basics well understood, Richardson guides her readers to the main course: what we can do to fix the problem.

While the idea of exploring policy change might send some readers back to more standard comfort food, Recipe for America neither overwhelms nor intimidates with its recommendations. Rather, Richardson proposes a series of small tweaks or improvements within the current system, whose ripple effects would greatly bolster efforts to grow regional, sustainable, food systems. Still sound a little lofty? It’s not. In fact, the cliff notes might read something like this:

Food labels should give nutritional details. For example, GMOs yes or no, rBGH yes or no, country of origin, and additives yes or no and, if yes, what? Food labels should also jive with FDA recommendations.

Food safety policy should make our food safer and work for the farmers that grow our food. Safe food does not contribute to antibiotic resistance or risk spreading Mad Cow disease. The safety of our food supply should be regulated by one agency that has no conflicts of interest in protecting the health of the general public.

Children should have access to good food. Unhealthy food should not be marketed to children by corporations or their schools. “Kid” foods should not contain added sugars, food dyes, and other additives that have been directly connected to health and behavioral problems.

Farming and processing should be safe for and respectful of workers and animals.

The Farm Bill can be changed to promote the growing and eating of healthful foods. Enough said.

Richardson’s ultra-practical analysis of current food and farm policy gives the impression of an attainable revolution. In conclusion, she poses the rhetorical question: “Can we do it? Can we turn our currently unsustainable food system, a system that is unfair to workers, bad for our health, cruel to animals and destructive to our environment, into one that treats workers fairly, respects human and animal rights, nourishes our bodies and renews the land?” Her answer: “While none of the ideas I have talked about in this book will happen all by themselves, with a strong organized and sustained effort from citizens who are tired of a bad food system that profits the few at the expense of the many, we can make a sustainable food system a reality.”

Far from leaving her readers overfull, Jill Richardson’s down to earth approach tackles the task of empowering her audience with such concrete swiftness that they will no doubt be ready to don an apron and RSVP to the invitation to take back the food system and food democracy…right after dinner.

A Country Loaf

Dawn — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 21:07:26 +0000

This post comes from Marjorie Taylor, the proprietor of The Cook’s Atelier . She cooks and writes about food from her tiny home in Burgundy, France. See more of her writing on her blog, www.thecooksatelier.com.

I am often asked why I choose to live in France and what makes France so special. For me, I can only say it is my obsession with good and simple food. Through my cooking classes and market tours, I enjoy sharing the knowledge that I have learned over the years about the connection to food that French people seem to have. Unfortunately, for the most part, this is lacking in America. Good food in France is not about recipes as much as it is about the quality of the ingredients. You eat what is in season here and what is fresh and local. It’s not a political statement or a new way of thinking, it is an everyday connection to the things that make life worth living: people you love, good food, good wine and the time to relax and enjoy it. It is as simple as that.

Although each region has its own specific cuisine that it is known for, the real draw for me is the connection that French people have to the simple act of eating. They take their time, each meal is savored and never rushed. The table is properly set, no eating in the car and, most importantly, they know how to slow down and savor the things in life that truly count. Things just taste better in France. The focus is about real food, the artisan producers and the local cooks who create it.

On a recent visit to the Savoie, I had the pleasure of meeting Monsieur Michel Grange, an artisan bread baker from Bonne Nuit. Bonne nuit, is French for “good night,” and is one of a few little hamlets just outside the village of Valloire in the Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France. I spent my days researching artisan food producers in the area and was pleased to be able to visit with Monsieur Grange on more than one occasion. After a short drive south on the curvy mountain road just outside Valloire, you will reach the boulangerie of Monsieur Grange. It’s not the typical boulangerie that you might be used to seeing on a visit to France. There is no counter or display of fancy breads, no initial artfully created on the boule with flour, like those of a famous Parisian boulangerie. This is rustic bread, made by hand, from a true artisan producer.

Monsieur Grange bakes his bread in a very small, one room stone building located at the end of a country road. There is a little sign posted over the door that reads “1892 four à Pain.” This translates to “1892 bread oven.” Simple and to the point. The room is dark, with the exception of a stream of sunlight coming through the only window and the glowing embers when he opens the door to the wood-fired oven. Through the doorway, at the rear of the tiny, dirt-floored building, you can see the old oven, a stack of wood, a table, an old-fashioned scale, a few proofing buckets and the rolls of linen he uses for proofing – allowing the yeast to set and the dough to rise.

Now this is artisan bread making. No whirl of a mixer or steam ovens here, Monsieur Grange makes every loaf by hand, weighing his ingredients on the old scale. There isn’t even electricity in the building. He makes only one type of bread: pain d’alpage, an alpine country loaf, and only sells his bread on Wednesdays at noon. He arrives very early in the morning to build the fire in the oven and returns late morning, when the embers have cooled to the correct temperature, to bake the bread. The first morning that I met him, the bread was proofing on the table and he was preparing it for the oven. I arrived early so I would have a chance to visit with him and watch him work. Once the boules were proofed and ready to bake, he sliced a quick design on the top with an old paring knife, and slid them in the hot oven using a long handled bread peel aided by a family member holding a flashlight. He was kind enough to let me photograph him while he worked and suggested that I return at noon to pick up my loaf of bread. Later, as I arrived a few minutes after noon, Monsieur Grange was waiting patiently near his car for my return and politely pointed out that it was time for lunch.

On the following Wednesday, I returned just before noon in time to watch Monsieur Grange take the bread from the oven. A small crowd was forming in anticipation. I was amazed at the number of people who arrived at this little stone building, right at noon, to pick up their loaves of freshly baked bread. All at once, Monsieur Grange quickly placed the warm loaves on the table, just outside the doorway and, within a few seconds, they were all gone. My bread was enjoyed at an impromptu picnic with local cheese and a drizzle of honey from the hives in the pasture across the lane.

I love visiting the little villages of France and seeking out the artisan food producers and local cooks who are best known for their preparation of a regional meal – one that begins with seasonal ingredients and is prepared by cooks who take pleasure in slowing down and sharing the meal with people they love. In France, they enjoy the art of preparing a meal and the leisurely time it takes to eat it. It’s not about rushing or getting back to the office in an hour flat. It’s about taking time to reconnect with your family at the table. This is done through preparing and cooking lunch and dinner each and every day. As Americans, we should take note.

You Can Grow Food ANYWHERE (Even on a Roof!)

Dawn — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:19:18 +0000

This post comes from our friend Julie Negrin M.S. – Julie is a nutritionist, cooking instructor, writer and most recently, a blogger – check out her new blog: My Kitchen Nutrition at www.julienegrin.com/blog. She was also just visiting NYC for 5 weeks to teach and had the opportunity to visit Rooftop Farms.

Have you ever tried planting lettuce on a farm in the middle of a thunderstorm? Well, neither had I – until last week. This was no ordinary farm either. It sits on top of a large Brooklyn building that’s used for filming movies most of the year – and aptly named, Rooftop Farms.

There have already been some great articles and blog posts about the farm, so I won’t regal you with too many details of their amazing feats but just imagine this: a lush 6,000 square foot organic farm grown in a just a few short months – it all started by using a crane to haul the correct amount of soil so that it wouldn’t weigh too much for the roof. How’s that for innovative? I’m excited if I can get a few tomatoes to grow in a pot! My lack of gardening knowledge is something I hope to rectify very soon – but I’d always assumed that I’d have to live somewhere like Seattle to grow food. I was wrong. Rooftop Farms offers volunteering opportunities and classes so that children and adults living in an urban setting can plant, pick, and eat fresh, local produce. Rooftop Farms grows lettuce, kale, eggplant, beans, tomatoes and more – which you can buy on Sundays between 9am-4pm. If you can’t make it on Sunday, you can taste their succulent goods at several nearby restaurants.

Who is behind this progressive endeavor? Annie Novak, farmer and Ben Flanner, business-man-turned farmer. Annie has a very impressive resume (she has farmed in a half a dozen countries including growing chocolate in Africa). She loves sharing her incredible knowledge and hopes that she can inspire others to find ways to grow food in alternative settings. Both her and Ben work very hard to make the farm accessible to everyone – especially kids. She also holds classes and workshops for kids through Growing Chefs and at The New York Botanical Garden.

I had the pleasure of coordinating a field trip to the farm last week for my students (HealthCorps coordinators). The plan was for us to farm for a couple of hours and then walk over to a wonderful new restaurant, Anella – where Annie and Ben arranged to have the produce we picked for our dinner. The weather, however, did not cooperate – a major thunderstorm hit that day. We all braved the rain to plant lettuce, stake tomato plants, and have a tour of the farm. I could have stayed there all day, even in my drenched clothes – maybe for the same reason I love cooking – there is something so fulfilling about working with food…especially when it means digging in the dirt.

We then shuffled over to the restaurant, Anella for what ended up being a VERY memorable meal of roasted beets with fresh herbs, pesto pasta with tomatoes, sautéed chard, truffled white pizza pie (yes, it was as good as it is sounds!), bruschetta smothered in goat cheese and drizzled with a balsamic reduction – I have to stop now or I will put myself in a food coma just thinking about it. Let’s just say the meal was DIVINE.

The best part, for me, was witnessing the astounded looks of discovery and pleasure on my students’ faces. I’d spent a full month waxing on to them about how we should eat as many whole foods as possible – and that if we consume deliciously prepared meals made with “real” ingredients, we will feel so nourished and satisfied that we won’t crave junk food. Our lovely meal was the perfect ending to their training - hearing me say the same thing over and over again was no where near as powerful as TASTING it.

The next day, I was thrilled to hear my students say, “After that dinner, I just felt so happy all evening” and “I was full but not stuffed and felt so satisfied” and my favorite, “I had no idea I could enjoy a vegetarian meal and feel full from it.” As an educator, my goal is to help my students make connections. I think (and hope) that my main message was made clear that evening: Pollan’s sage advice – eat real foods, mostly plants, and not too much. Okay, so, none of us did so well on the last one but I told them that if we were to eat those kind of meals ALL of the time (like many Europeans), we wouldn’t gorge on it! Instead, we’d eat small amounts and feel full and most importantly – feel happy.

For a new recipe for all of your summer vegetables, check out: Farmer’s Market Ragout (see blog post below).

For more information about urban farms, visit Rooftop Farms, Growing Chefs and Will Allen’s extraordinary successes as a city farmer.

Farmstead Cheese

Sophy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:44:33 +0000

I just recently returned from Valloire, a tiny mountain village located in the French Alps. Specifically, it is located in the Savoie department in the Rhône-Alpes region in southeastern France. The region is known for its pedigreed beef, wonderful milk, cream and cheese and is blessed with several artisan producers who are passionate about preserving the culinary traditions of the area. The traditional food of the area is a “stick to your ribs” type of fare; think fondue, crusty breads, potatoes and artisan sausage served with wine from the region or a glass of cold beer.

My days were spent visiting the little hamlets in the area and enjoying picnics near the river on the green slopes just outside the little village. The sky was bright blue and the ground was covered with an amazing assortment of wild flowers. All was quiet except for the distant sound of the bells on the sheep while they grazed just up the hill. To say it was picturesque is an understatement. There are plenty of well maintained little potagers dotting the countryside as well as little patches dedicated to the art of keeping bees. They have a weekly market in Valloire that surrounds the beautiful baroque style church in the center of the village that features artisan sausage makers, regional cheese from the area such as Beaufort (cow), Chevrotin (goat) and Reblochon made from raw cow’s milk, and honey made from the wild alpine flowers.

It was during this visit that I had the pleasure of meeting Monsieur Christophe Traviegnet, the cheese maker at La Ferme du Pré Clos. By definition, farmstead cheese is a type of artisan cheese that is made traditionally from milk from the producer’s own herd of cows, sheep or goats. Artisan cheese is made by hand using the craftsmanship of skilled cheese makers and the taste of the cheese reflects the care of the cheese maker as well as the terroir of where it is produced.

I arrived at the creamery mid-morning to a little crowd already gathered who were interested in learning more about the art of making cheese. We tasted fresh cow’s milk from that morning’s milking as we sampled an assortment of cheese made on the farm. On the day I visited, M. Traviegnet was making a Tomme cheese. Tomme is a type of cheese, and is a generic name given to a class of cheese produced mainly in the French Alps. They are normally produced from the skim milk left over after the cream has been removed to produce butter and richer cheeses. I spent the morning with him as he worked and I can honestly say this was one of the best mornings of my trip. It is exciting to meet people who are so passionate about what they do and who are dedicated to the preservation of culinary traditions.

Things around here have a natural order to them. People do what they love and they seem to be connected to the land. It’s very local, not just a saying or a movement, it’s just the way it is. After finishing his morning making cheese, M. Traviegnet drained off the remaining whey and returned it to the milk buckets and mentioned that he would be giving it to his pigs. It’s a great example of sustainability and coming full-circle on the farm.

Thanks to a new generation of farmstead cheese makers, traditional cheese making is becoming more and more popular in America and many come to France to learn their trade. Be sure to seek out the artisan cheese makers in your local market and do your part to help preserve this culinary tradition.

Marinated fresh goat cheese

Marinating goat cheese will give it more flavor. It is the perfect accompaniment for rustic bread or a green salad from your garden.

Small fresh goat cheeses, approximately 2 ounces each

Extra-virgin olive oil, preferably organic

Pink peppercorns

Fresh thyme

Place the cheeses in a jar and add the oil to cover. Add the peppercorns and thyme to taste. Cover the jar tightly and refrigerate for up to 2 weeks. It is important to keep the cheese completely submerged in the olive oil. You may use the olive oil in the dressing for the salad.

Guide to Good Food – Asking Questions (part 2)

diane — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:18:22 +0000

Last week we gave you tips for asking questions at farms and farmers’ markets so you can find the best food for you and your family. This week we continue with information you need to shop at stores and restaurants.

Stores
Because the vast majority of stores buy their food from distributors, they’ll be less likely to know as much about the food as the farmer does. But don’t let that stop you! Don’t forget that your questions are sending a message up the supply and distribution line. If we all start asking for something, we will greatly increase our chances of getting it.

I often use my mother as an example when I’m speaking. She’s not an activist or a foodie, but she wants what she wants. She happens to know the owners of a dairy in Lewes, Delaware, which is very close to where she lives in Rehoboth Beach, and she loves their milk. She went into her usual grocery store and asked the manager if he would start selling some of their products. He said no. She went back a week later and asked again. He agreed to sell a couple of containers of milk, which quickly sold out. I was just down visiting and went to buy milk for my parents and saw that Lewes Dairy now has several shelves of milk on display in the milk section, and people were literally grabbing it up while I was there.

When my mother told the dairy owners what she’d done, they said they’d been trying for years to get their milk sold locally. And it only took one customer asking two questions to change the milk supply in the Rehoboth Beach area.

So if you have a favorite local sustainable food item that you don’t see in your grocery store, ask the manager to stock it. You could even go so far as to find a suitable farmer to supply the product to the store. A word of advice, though – if you are going to get a store to stock a particular item, please make sure you purchase it. Grocery stores work on slim profit margins and shelf space is limited, so make sure you really want what you’re asking them to stock.

If you’re unsure about meat, poultry and dairy items sold in the store, download Sustainable Table’s Questions for a Store Manager, Meat Manager and/or Butcher (which includes answers also). It supplies questions like, “Do you know how the animals were raised?” You can also download Questions for a Farmer and see if the store is able to answer them.

If the store manager or butcher doesn’t know the answers to your questions, ask them to ask the distributor. The same applies to vegetables – talk with the produce manager about where the fruits and vegetables come from. Ask if any are grown locally. I was pleasantly surprised when shopping in Decherd, Tennessee, last year. I asked the very young produce employee if any of the food was raised locally, and he went through the whole produce section and pointed out which was grown close by, which was from Tennessee, and which was from other nearby states like Georgia. If the employees at your store can’t answer these questions, just keep asking until they find out. You may be surprised, though, at the depth of knowledge store employees have these days.

If you can’t get answers to your questions, ask for the name of the farm the food comes from, or at least for the distributor. Call the farm or distributor directly and ask them how the food was produced.

Encourage the store managers to label local food with the name of the farm, so you don’t always have to ask questions. (That’s a good incentive for them to put up signs!) If you’re really feeling bold, see if your store will also list the farm’s growing practices, to make it easier for other customers. And if you have trouble finding the store manager or don’t have time to really speak with him or her, leave behind an “I Care Notecard” to let them know what you are looking for.

Restaurants
Restaurants are a little trickier, unless you’re eating at one that specializes in local sustainable food, but don’t let that stop you. Ask if any of the food is local, sustainable and/or organic. You may be surprised. I’ve eaten in several restaurants that use organic eggs but only if you ask for them (and they charge more). Just know that the waiters and chefs may be overworked, so if the establishment is busy, you may want to keep your questions casual. Questions you can ask include:

Is any of your food local or organic?
Do you know if the animals were raised on pasture or come from local farms?

You can take handy wallet-sized cards along to help you remember a couple of questions to ask.

Another option is to leave a note behind with your bill or at the front desk. You could leave a card like the one Curt Ellis from Wicked Delicate production company and King Corn filmmaker, has created to let restaurants know he won’t eat meat from their establishment until they source from local sustainable farms. Feel free to adapt his card for your use. (Copy below.) You can simply type this up in a Word document and print these out on your home printer or send them off and print up hundreds so you can always keep a couple in your wallet.

The bottom line is simply to speak up. Ask where your food came from and how it was produced. Once you start, you’ll find it’s quite enjoyable to get to know your local farmers, store managers and restaurant employees. And you may be surprised at how much people know or how willing they are to get you the information you’re looking for.

So let’s eat!

(Please feel free to adapt this to say what you want to say. Or you can simply copy this into a document, format as you like, and print out.)

THANK YOU FOR THE DELICIOUS MEAL!

You may have noticed that I didn’t order any meat today. It’s not that I’m a vegetarian – I’m an eager carnivore – but I’ve made a commitment to only eat animal products from humane, sustainable, family farms.

I hope you’ll consider offering local, free-range, pasture-fed, and hormone- and antibiotic-free protein here soon. If you have trouble finding it, you might ask at the farmers’ market about wholesale buying, or visit www.EatWellGuide.org.

I look forward to coming back again soon – and thanks for listening!

Respectfully,

(your name)

(Diane Hatz is the Founder of Sustainable Table, Executive Producer of The Meatrix movies and co-Founder of the Eat Well Guide. This is the 17th installment in her series Sustainable Table’s Guide to Good Food.)

Little Green Thumbs

Sophy — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:32:02 +0000

This post comes from Melissa B. Williams at www.mindful-mama.com.

Confession: When I was a little girl, I used to sneak into the garden and eat all the carrots-and I mean all of them. It was no secret who did it: I was only about 4, and I’d leave the telltale carrot tops lying around as evidence of my consumption. My mother would lecture me about sharing, but I now know-as a mother myself-that she was really glowing with satisfaction. What mama wouldn’t want her child to “sneak” for carrots instead of a Twinkie or cupcake?

In this age of iPods, cell phones, and the Wii, many parents feel it’s nearly impossible to get their children excited about the outdoors-and we won’t even talk about their lack of enthusiasm for veggies. But kids are interested in nature-they (and we parents, too) just might be too over stimulated to notice.

Younger kids are naturally drawn to the dirt, essentially creating mud baths whenever the opportunity arises. Older children might not be as into getting dirty, but they definitely are interested in receiving rewards for their work (um, allowance anyone?), and nothing is quite as rewarding as growing your own food.

Build It and They Will Come

The first step to luring your children outside is building a garden that suits their needs as well as yours. Gardens can be built anywhere, from conventional garden boxes and planters to a kiddy pool, old sandbox, or even an old claw-foot bathtub. City dwellers take note: Gardens can be created entirely in containers as long as the containers are suited to each individual plant. Once you’ve decided what you’re going to plant your goods in and where (pick a sunny spot that receives at least six hours of sunshine per day), you’ll want to figure out how much you need and want to plant in that space. If you have a small garden, that’s going to be your guide. If you have a larger space, honestly evaluate how much your family can eat, give away, or preserve. The The Family Kitchen Garden (Timber Press, 2009) offers a guide for figuring out exactly how much you need for a family of four. (Unfortunately, I read this guide much too late and have already started 60 tomato plants. I guess I’m going to be getting into the ketchup business.)

Little feet need paths to walk on, creating boundaries so they don’t trample their hard work. The rule of thumb is to make the paths at least a few feet wide so that you can kneel and work in the garden space. (Or, so that a good game of tag won’t ruin a month’s worth of dedication and growth.) After your space is created, talk with a local gardener or read a local gardening guide to ensure that you have healthy soil and know which amendments to add for your region. Most kids aren’t interested in manual labor, so it’s best to work the soil before bringing your kids into the mix-no matter their age. Remember, you want this to be an adventure, not a punishment or a chore.

If you have more than one child, divide the garden, giving each gardener his or her own space for planting. Seeds do not have to be planted in rows. Let your children be creative, planting in a pattern that suits them. This will create a very organic looking space, full of wonder for everyone involved. (Do try to keep seeds the recommended distance from one another to allow them to succeed.

Gardening Through the Ages

It is never too early to start gardening with children. Mike Metallo, president of the National Gardening Association, suggests introducing children as young as preschoolers to gardening. Toddlers and preschoolers have a natural propensity to explore. Depending on the age of your children, you’ll want to gear your garden, and the resulting activities, toward their interests. Kids of all ages will enjoy watering as well as harvesting the produce. Older kids can be responsible for weeding and cleaning up the garden. Here are a few ideas for getting kids of all ages interested in your garden.

Globalize. Research different cultures and plant staples from those cultures, like basil from Italy, peppers or corn from Mexico, and eggplant from the Middle East. This will introduce your children to world cuisine, while also giving you the opportunity to bring a bit of diversity to your table.
Create a theme. A pizza garden or an herbal tea garden lets your kids have an endgame in mind throughout the process. Let the kids decide what constitutes a pizza topping (and don’t forget herbs). If your 4-year-old is convinced that peas are a good choice, go with it. Gardens are meant to be creative, and sometimes a bit outlandish.
Celebrate the ecosystem. Younger kids are fascinated with creepy crawlers, so take advantage of that. Have them count the bugs and worms, and then take the opportunity to explain that many bugs are good for their plants, and that we want to do things to encourage them to visit, like, you know, not squishing them.
Keep track. Elementary school kids like to see results, so help them chart their plants’ growth. If they’ve planted several tomato plants, for instance, have them measure each in terms of height as well as production, and help watch how they grow throughout the season.
Harvest as an appetizer. Kids of all ages will enjoy the task of picking dinner. Send them outside an hour or two before mealtime, asking them to choose fruits or veggies that are ripe that they’d like to have. Feeling adventurous? Ask for their input on how to weave the ingredients into a meal. (Spinach and raspberry sorbet anyone?)
Share the bounty. Teach your children about community by having them help you distribute excess produce to your neighbors. They’ll have the opportunity to showcase their green thumbs, and you’ll have yet another reason to get them away from the TV.
Plant a tree. Celebrate milestones in your child’s life by planting a tree or bush in his honor. If he’s older, let him choose what to plant. Make it an annual tradition to take a photo in front of the plant, documenting both it and your little (or big) one’s growth.
Welcome visitors. Invite butterflies into your garden with such colorful and fragrant plants as butterfly bush, marigolds, and cosmos. Hummingbirds-another favorite for kids-are attracted to tubular and red flowers, including columbine and trumpet vines.

Special Considerations for Little Gardeners

Little hands do well with big seeds, including kid-friendly favorites like peas, squash, and beans. They also like quick results, so choose plants that mature quickly, including sugar snap peas, carrots, zucchini, and cucumbers. Also throw in some slow-growing plants like pumpkin, though: Nothing will pique their interest like getting to carve a pumpkin they grew themselves. Herbs are also an excellent choice. Lavender and chamomile are both very child-friendly and can be dried and used in sachets or added to herbal tea or lemonade.

As with anything else, you’ll want to keep an eye on your children when they navigate the garden. Some flowers are not only inedible, they’re actually poisonous. If you’ve got little ones running around, you’ll want to have all of the existing plants in your yard identified, and remove those that could be risky. (This is also a good exercise for pet owners.) Some plants might not be poisonous but may have thorns or spikes, or cause irritation to the skin. In Gardening With Kids (Ryland, Peters & Small, 2008) authors Catherine Woram and Martyn Cox suggest avoiding such common plants as delphinium, foxglove, lupine, and calla lily. Oleander is also very poisonous.

Gardens give children the opportunity to explore nature, get a little exercise, and unleash their creativity. Although my daughter may barely be walking, I’m determined to get her hands in the soil this growing season. Of course, I’m secretly hoping that at some point in time she’ll sneak out into our garden and steal her own veggies-she’ll have to find a love for something other than carrots, though: Those are already claimed.

Contributing Editor Melissa B. Williams takes time away from Mindful Mama to get muddy with her little girl, Sena.

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